A United Nations inquiry has found that Israel’s war on Gaza is a genocide, a landmark moment after nearly two years of war.
Navi Pillay, chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told Al Jazeera about its findings on Tuesday, holding Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant responsible, among others.
“We’ve identified the president, the prime minister and the former minister of defence based on their statements and the orders that they’ve given,” Pillay said in an interview.
“Because these three individuals were agents of the state, under the law, the state is held responsible. So we say it’s [the] state of Israel that has committed genocide,” she added.
According to the report, the commission found that, along with the statements made by the Israeli officials, there was “circumstantial evidence” that led to their findings of genocidal intent.
“The Commission concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the report found.
However, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs slammed the inquiry findings as “fake” in a post on X, and alleged that the report’s authors were “serving as Hamas proxies”.
“The report relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others,” the ministry said. “Israel categorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this Commission of Inquiry,” it added.
Israel’s permanent representative to the UN, Daniel Meron, also condemned the inquiry’s findings and referred to it as “scandalous”, “fake”, and a “libellous rant”.
‘Intentionally killed’
The report found that Israeli soldiers “intentionally killed” civilians in Gaza through the use of “wide impact munitions”.
“The Commission therefore concluded that the Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination in the Gaza Strip by killing Palestinian civilians. While the number of victims is not relevant for an act to constitute an act of genocide, the Commission notes that the number of victims may be taken into consideration to establish genocidal intent,” it added.
Israel’s war in Gaza began on October 7 2023, following the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel, which killed 1,139 people and more than 200 were taken hostage, of whom 48 remain in Gaza.
Widespread and intense Israeli attacks across the enclave since then have killed at least 64,871 people and wounded 164,610, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported on Monday.
Amid the UN inquiry findings, Israeli attacks on Gaza have only intensified, with Defence Minister Israel Katz announcing in the early hours of Tuesday that the enclave was “on fire”.
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has landed in Qatar, the only country he said can mediate an end to Israel’s war on Gaza, shortly after warning that just a “short window” remains to secure a ceasefire as Israel said it has started the main part of a ground operation to seize Gaza City shirtly after his departure.
Rubio arrived in Doha on Tuesday, a week after Israeli carried out strikes against Hamas leaders in the country, drawing international condemnation.
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His visit comes a day after Gulf states pledged to activate a joint defence pact as Arab and Islamic leaders stood in solidarity against Israel’s attack during an emergency summit in Qatar.
En route to Doha, Rubio told reporters that he would urge Qatar to continue playing a “constructive role” in the negotiations, following the Israeli attack which the Gulf nation called “cowardly and treacherous”.
“Obviously they have to decide if they want to do that after last week or not, but we want them to know that if there’s any country in the world that could help end this through a negotiation, it’s Qatar,” he said.
But Rubio warned that time was running out to secure a deal as Israel intensified its bombardments of Gaza City, killing dozens in the urban centre and destroying numerous residential buildings, as it pushes forward with plans to seize the besieged territory.
“The Israelis have begun to take operations there. So we think we have a very short window of time in which a deal can happen. We don’t have months any more, and we probably have days and maybe a few weeks to go,” Rubio said.
“Our number one choice is that this ends through a negotiated settlement where Hamas says, ‘We’re going to demilitarise, we’re no longer going to pose a threat,’” repeating his stance on Monday in Israel that the Palestinian group needed to “cease to exist”.
Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from Israel [File: Amir Cohen/Reuters]
Rubio, who is due to meet the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, also said the US and Qatar are close to finalising an enhanced defence cooperation agreement.
The US secretary of state visit to Qatar comes at a critical time of friction in the wake of the Israeli attack.
On Monday, Rubio affirmed the US’s unwavering support for Israel at a news conference in West Jerusalem with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Later that day, after Netanyahu refused to rule out another strike on Qatar to assassinate the Hamas leaders, US President Donald Trump insisted in the Oval Office that “he [Netanyahu] won’t be doing that again”.
Still, Rubio told reporters that the US and Qatar have a “close partnership”.
“In fact, we have an enhanced defence cooperation agreement, which we’ve been working on, we’re on the verge of finalising,” he said.
Speaking from Doha on Tuesday, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford said there were still “a lot of unanswered questions” after Rubio’s trip to Israel.
“The optics of yesterday, I think it is safe to say, will be pretty shocking for people across this region,” he said, citing Rubio’s hugging of Netanyahu.
Israeli attack on Qatar
In an emergency summit in Doha on Monday, the leaders from Arab and Muslim countries pledged in a joint statement to take action to prevent Israel from its attacks on Palestinians.
The statement also urged states to review “diplomatic and economic relations with it [Israel], and initiate legal proceedings against it”.
But as the summit condemned the attack inside Qatar and Rubio claimed there was not much time for a ceasefire deal, attacks rang out throughout the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Tuesday.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Gaza City’s central urban hub was “on fire”.
“We will not relent, and we will not back down until the mission is accomplished,” Katz said.
Polls have opened in Malawi with the incumbent president and his predecessor vying for a second chance to govern the largely poor southern African nation, battered by soaring costs and severe fuel shortages, in a closely and fiercely contested election where a run-off is widely expected.
Polls opened at 6:00am (04:00 GMT) on Tuesday with 17 names on the ballot.
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Analysts say the race is between President Lazarus Chakwera, 70, and his predecessor, law professor Peter Mutharika, 85, both of whom have campaigned on improving the agriculture-dependent economy battered by a series of climate shocks, with inflation topping 27 percent.
Tuesday’s elections mark Malawi’s first national elections since the 2019 presidential vote was nullified and ordered to be redone in 2020 because of widespread irregularities.
However, both of the men have been accused of cronyism, corruption and economic mismanagement during their first presidential terms, leaving voters a choice between “two disappointments”, political commentator Chris Nhlane told the AFP news agency.
Though both drew large crowds to colourful final rallies at the weekend, many younger Malawians were reportedly uninspired.
With about 60 percent of the 7.2 million registered voters aged less than 35, activists have been mobilising to overcome apathy and get young voters to the polls.
“We are frustrated,” said youth activist Charles Chisambo, 34. “If people vote for Mutharika, it is just to have a change,” told AFP.
“We don’t need a leader, we need someone who can fix the economy.”
The cost of living in one of the world’s poorest countries has surged 75 percent in 12 months, according to reports citing the Centre for Social Concern, a nongovernmental organisation.
Two seasons of drought and a devastating cyclone in 2023 have compounded hardships in a country where about 70 percent of the 21 million population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.
Chakwera, from the Malawi Congress Party that led the nation to independence from Britain in 1964, has pleaded for continuity to “finish what we started”, flaunting several infrastructure projects under way.
Days earlier, he announced a huge drop in the high cost of fertiliser, a major complaint across the largely agricultural country.
Lydia Sibale, 48, a hospital administrator who had been in a petrol queue in Lilongwe for an hour, told AFP she still had confidence in Chakwera. “The only challenge is the economic crisis, which is worldwide,” she said.
Chakwera was elected with about 59 percent of the vote in the 2020 rerun, but, five years later, there is some nostalgia for Mutharika’s “relatively better administration”, said analyst Mavuto Bamusi.
“Chakwera’s incumbency advantage has significantly been messed up by poor economic performance,” he said.
“I want to rescue this country,” Mutharika told a cheering rally of his Democratic Progressive Party in the second city of Blantyre, the heartland of the party that has promised a “return to proven leadership” and economic reform.
“I will vote for APM (Mutharika) because he knows how to manage the economy and has Malawians’ welfare at heart,” 31-year-old student Thula Jere told AFP.
Ludhiana, India – On the floor of a Ludhiana spinning mill, 29-year-old Pankaj Kumar stands at his station, his fingers a blur as he knots loose threads and feeds them onto a spinning wheel. The yarn will soon make its way to the city’s textile factories, which produce woollen knitwear, hosiery, and other garments, much of it destined for the United States.
Kumar has worked in different spinneries for nearly a decade, but for the past four months, this one has been his livelihood, bringing in 18,000 rupees ($203.87) a month. But now that US President Donald Trump has slapped India with 50 percent tariffs, Kumar’s income is uncertain. “I don’t know,” he says. “The factory owner was saying we are unsure how much to manufacture in the coming months. They might not need me.”
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Rajesh Kumar, who manages the unit, told Al Jazeera that orders for yarn have plunged by nearly 30 percent in just two weeks since the US rolled out a sweeping 50 percent tariff on Indian goods – a two-tiered levy which took full effect on August 27. Of that, the first 25 percent kicked in on August 7 and was later doubled as punishment for India’s imports of Russian oil.
“The local textile factories we supply are telling us there’s uncertainty in future US orders,” he said. “Until that clears, new production cannot be planned.”
India has denounced the tariff hike as “unfair” and “unjustified”. But the shock is already rippling through textile units across the country. The sector contributes about 2.3 percent to India’s gross domestic product (GDP), 13 percent to industrial production, and 12 percent to total exports. It is also the second-largest employer after agriculture, providing direct work to more than 45 million people, many of them women and members of the rural workforce.
The blow is particularly sharp because the industry relies heavily on the US, which is one of India’s largest markets for textiles and apparel. In 2024, India reportedly supplied roughly 6 percent of US apparel imports, amounting to $4.8bn. That represented nearly one-third of India’s total apparel exports, and a significant share of its broader textile exports.
No new orders
Ludhiana, one of India’s biggest textile hubs in the northwestern state of Punjab, is particularly exposed. Each year, the city ships approximately $700m worth of hosiery and knitwear – especially woollens – to the US, and the industry here employs more than 500,000 workers.
India’s textile sector is the second-largest employer in the country, and those jobs are in peril with US tariffs of 50 percent [Anuj Behal/Al Jazeera]
Ashwin Aggarwal, head of garment exports at Nahar Industries, which supplies to brands, such as GAP, Tommy Hilfiger and Phillips-Van Heusen Corp in the US, said the company exports garments worth about $35m to $40m annually. Business has slowed dramatically since the 50 percent tariff came into effect, he said.
“We have not received any fresh orders since the announcement,” he said. “Smaller brands that used to procure from us have already told us they will not place orders any more. The larger ones, tied into longer contracts, will at least allow the current production cycle to finish – but they are insisting we absorb 25 percent of the tariff burden. That makes operations brutally cut-throat, with margins collapsing. If we cannot find alternative ways to stay competitive, we may be forced to lay off people.”
Trump’s earlier tariff proposal in April – launching with a 10 percent universal duty and setting India’s rate at 26 percent, lower than those for rival garment hubs like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and China – had briefly raised hopes that India could expand its share of the $16bn US apparel market. But with India now at the highest tariff tier, compared with 20 percent for Bangladesh and Vietnam, 19 percent for Pakistan, and 30 percent for China, those expectations have collapsed.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), an industry body, has warned that the tariff hike could be devastating. Amit Thapar, chairman of CII’s Northern Region Export Promotion Committee, described the move as “not just a dent to our profits – it’s a death knell for our competitiveness and survival”.
Thapar noted that even the raw materials that Indian firms source from overseas to use in their products are faced with these levies. He added that the measure seems more like a form of punishment and is raising serious concerns about potential disruptions to supply chains.
India’s textile industry contributes about 2.3 percent to the country’s GDP [Anuj Behal/Al Jazeera]
Ludhiana is far from the only city at risk. Other textile-rich hubs such as Tiruppur, Panipat, Surat, Bikaner, and Coimbatore are also facing precarious conditions.
Panipat in Haryana, one of the world’s largest textile recycling hubs and India’s biggest supplier of blankets, carpets, and shoddy yarn, has an export turnover of about 200 billion rupees ($2.2bn). Of this, home textiles alone account for about 120 billion rupees ($1.3bn) in annual sales to the US, making up roughly 60 percent of the city’s total exports.
Rakesh Kumar Goyal, who runs an industrial unit in Panipat and supplies materials such as towels, cushion covers, and rugs primarily to Brazil and countries in Africa, had been in exploratory talks to supply to US retailers, such as Walmart, IKEA and H&M Home. But those plans have come to a screeching halt now.
“If the tariffs remain in place, suppliers to the US will begin scouting other markets where we may currently have a niche, and that will only intensify competition for us,” he says.
Vinod Dhamija, president of the Haryana Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said, “Some industry owners are now considering rerouting their supply chains through countries such as Bangladesh or Vietnam to facilitate exports to the US. Exporters are either planning to set up warehouse facilities in these countries and carry out minimal value addition there, or are in talks with US importers for additional support to make this arrangement viable. If the current tariffs remain in place, this could mark a significant shift in trade strategy.”
‘No further shipments’
In Tiruppur, a southern city in Tamil Nadu that accounts for 68 percent of India’s knitwear exports, orders halted when the 50 percent levy was announced in early August. The blow is particularly cruel as Tamil Nadu’s textile belt had actually been gearing up for a rebound in US demand on the back of the initial round of higher tariffs on other countries. Many exporters had invested in new machinery, anticipating a surge in orders, including from the India-UK free trade agreement.
Buyers have put orders on hold, and some have asked suppliers to absorb part of the tariffs [Anuj Behal/Al Jazeera]
But all of that is gone now.
Kumar Duraisamy, joint secretary of the Tiruppur Exporters Association, told Al Jazeera that when levies of 25 percent were announced, buyers gave suppliers a deadline and told them to ship whatever was ready by August 27 and asked them to absorb part of the tariff, conditions that they agreed to. But with the additional 25 percent, orders were effectively put on hold.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for urgent intervention as the state has a high dependence on the US market for its exports.
A large share of these workers are home-based, many are women and at the very end of the production chain, said Mary Anuklatham of Social Awareness and Voluntary Education in Tiruppur. “The immediate impacts are not yet visible for home-based workers, but if the tariff remains in place, the coming months could be devastating. Women already earn less than a dollar a day and may find themselves deprived even of that.”
Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG) will commit to defending each other from armed attacks as they face “emerging threats” to their security, a new defence treaty seen by the AFP news agency says.
The South Pacific Island nation celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence from Australia on Tuesday, with the treaty expected to be sealed on Wednesday.
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The pact, seen as a strident push to counter China’s rising Pacific influence, will be signed by Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his PNG counterpart James Marape in the capital, Port Moresby.
The agreement, which also enables the nations’ citizens to serve in each other’s militaries, allows PNG nationals to gain Australian citizenship.
“Each Party recognises that an armed attack on either of the Parties within the Pacific would be dangerous to each other’s peace and security and the security of the Pacific,” the pact states, according to AFP.
Under the treaty, both parties will “act to meet the common danger, in accordance with its constitutional processes”.
On Tuesday, Australia offered to gift PNG an extension to its Parliament House. Albanese was among the government leaders who gathered at Independence Hill in Port Moresby for a flag-raising ceremony.
Albanese said Australia will support the construction of a new ministerial wing for PNG’s National Parliament.
“Our support for the expansion of Parliament House is an investment in Papua New Guinea’s democracy and sovereignty that will benefit future generations,” Albanese said in a statement, according to The Associated Press news agency.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, centre right, and other dignitaries stand in front of Parliament House after a flag-raising ceremony in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, September 16, 2025 [Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP]
The United States was represented at the celebration by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. Prince Edward represented his brother King Charles III, who is PNG’s head of state.
Charles had attended the first independence ceremony in 1975, representing his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
Australia is underscoring its respect for PNG’s sovereignty, which some local lawmakers fear could be undermined by a proposed bilateral defence treaty.
Several Pacific island nations, including PNG, are trying not to get caught taking sides in superpower tussles in the growing strategic competition between Beijing and Washington allies such as Australia.
Some PNG lawmakers fear the bilateral treaty with Australia would jeopardise its foreign policy of “friend to all, enemy to none”.
Albanese had originally planned to sign the treaty with his counterpart, James Marape, on Monday in advance of independence festivities. He announced on Monday, before leaving Australia, that the signing was delayed until Wednesday. “We will be able to advance the treaty tomorrow,” Albanese told reporters in Port Moresby.
An appeals court in the United States has ruled that Lisa Cook can keep her seat on the Federal Reserve for now, in a setback to President Donald Trump’s bid to fire the governor over as yet unproven claims of fraud.
In a 2-1 ruling issued late on Monday, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the Trump administration had not met the “stringent requirements” to stay a lower judge’s ruling that Cook should keep her position while the courts consider the grounds for her removal.
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The ruling came a day before the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting committee is set to begin two days of deliberations on whether to lower interest rates.
Members of the Federal Open Market Committee are expected to lower the benchmark interest rate by at least a quarter percentage point.
Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Bradley Garcia said Cook’s claim that she had been denied due process was “very likely meritorious” and had a “strong likelihood of success”.
“I agree with the district court’s conclusion that Cook’s due process claim is likely to succeed,” Garcia, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said in the decision.
Garcia said the Trump administration did not dispute that it had given Cook “no meaningful notice or opportunity to respond to the allegations against her”.
“The government argues only that Cook ‘does not explain what difference a hearing would have made’,” he said.
“Even accepting that premise, Cook’s entitlement to process stands apart from whether she would succeed in securing a different outcome.”
Trump ordered the immediate removal of Cook, one of the seven members of the Fed’s board of governors, last month in an unprecedented move that stoked fears for the independence of the US central bank.
Trump, who has for months pressured the Fed to lower interest rates, said he took the action in view of evidence that Cook had made false statements on a mortgage application.
Cook has argued that her firing was illegal and challenged the move in court.
Under the Federal Reserve Act and US Supreme Court precedent, the president must demonstrate “cause”, widely interpreted to mean malfeasance, to fire any of the central bank’s governors.
No president has ever removed a Fed governor in the 111-year history of the bank.
Separately on Monday, the US Senate voted 48-47 to confirm Stephen Miran, the chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, to the Fed’s board of governors.
